With Daisies In Her Hair
by The Grimm Maiden
Summary: Even after all these years, Severus Snape couldn't remember when exactly he had fallen in love with Lily Evans... SnapexLily I DONT OWN ANY HARRY POTTER CHARACTERS! Don't like, Don't Read!


Hello everyone I'm The Grimm Maiden ^-^ I hail from good old TX, god help me T-T, and I'm a graphic designer/game creator/artist. I am very pleased to start my account here on fanfic with a sad but sweet oneshot (aren't they great?) for one of my favorite pairings SnapexLily! I really wanted to make this story about their relationship (yes I realize Lily married James but that doesn't mean they couldn't have been friends... or maybe more.) and I couldn't resist the chance of making someone smile and cry. Before I spill the plot completely by mistake let's get on with the show!

I dedicate this to my friend Victoria, who's love for Snape/Lily inspired me to make this story...

*****WITH DAISIES IN HER HAIR*****

Even after all these years, Severus Snape couldn't remember when exactly he had fallen in love with Lily Evans. Sure he could recall the flurry of emotions he seemed to inherit when she was nearby or even the scent of cinnamon that seemed to surround her and tease his nose, but never the memory when he actually fell head over heels for the redhead.

One summer night while sitting on the roof to avoid his parents' fighting, Severus, 9 years old at the time, overheard a snippet of gossip from his neighbors. Apparently, a new family had just now settled in the two story home that had the wildflower field in the back. A family that went by the name Evans. However that was not what had captured young Severus's attention, no it had been the fact that strange things seemed to happen to the youngest girl of the family, Lily.

"Oi I'm tellin' you there's something wrong with that gal, ya know with the fire red 'air." The heavier woman slurred to her companion. "I'd say that little head of 'ers is a tad too loose, if you wanna hear my opinion, Gertrude. I swear she's a real nutcase!"

Gertrude nodded enthusiastically. "I agree with you Wilma, the Evans girl is a strange one. I heard from Michelle Brown, you know the woman who lives down the street from her, that her daughter Elizabeth has taken a liking to her and they have been seen playing together. Well, Michelle came to see me yesterday, said there's been some awfully weird things happening."

"Such as?" Wilma grunted.

"Well, apparently Elizabeth came home to her mama and told her that Lily had somehow made a crown of daisies transform into a real crown of GOLD!"

Severus felt his eyes widen. Quietly scurrying to the edge of the roof, Severus peaked over at the whispering women, his mind full of curiosity and excitement. Could she be one of them, a wizard like him?

"Sorry to say I wasn't there to see that, otherwise I might've believed ya."

"Wilma, I swear to you it wasn't a lie! I've seen her doing something like that too, except she healed a dying bird-"

"What nonsense!"

With that the portly woman named Wilma waddled back to her own home, the skinnier sickly one named Gertrude following her.

By then Severus, having heard so much about the mysterious girl named Lily, he sprang back through his window and into his room. He began to gather some things that he would want to bring with him the next day when he would try to meet her. He grabbed his last two chocolate frogs he had saved from last Christmas, his practice broom, and his mother's potion textbook from when she was still at Hogwarts. As he reached for his History of Magic book, he saw his reflection in the yellowed cracking mirror on his dresser. Pale skin and long unkept hair that hid small black eyes stared back at him, mocking him. He felt his sudden euphoria deplete and he set his knapsack back on the ground next to his bed. They called her a freak and even crazy but they never once called the girl ugly. Severus on the hand was seen by others as both. He was the boy that kept to himself and his books, the one with a long face and an empty stare. His clothes hung loosely on his body like a wet jacket on a coat rack and his father's oversized dirty trenchcoat. His own appearance disgusted him, so much so that he rolled over to the other side of his squeaky mattress, away from the taunting glass. How could he expect a complete stranger to want him as a companion if he didn't even want himself?

The answer was quite simple, he thought as he closed his eyes and felt the familiar tug of sleep.

They wouldn't even try.

So the next day, when Severus Snape left his grim bedroom for the first time in his nine years of life, he expected nothing more than to be laughed at or pushed away in disgust.

As he closed his front door with a soft thus, he never expected to find a friend on a swing in a field of wildflowers.

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Severus recalled his first glance of the family from afar, still admitting to himself that beauty WAS NOT among the Evans' genes.

The father, Lawrence E. Evans, was a business salesman who sold all sorts of "rare" items. He would claim that certain items were at one point a commodity of the rich and famous. He had always seemed to know the right things to say in order to get a good deal, such as "this shoe once belonged to so and so" and the always popular "and it was this _very_ bow that so and so wore before they died. He seemed like an odd man but in a good kind of way to Severus. He was always good to his children and would wink at them behind his reading glasses if he knew they were up to any mischief. He was a plain looking man, and his youngest daughter was a female mirror version if him.

The mother, Felicity Evans, was a charming woman but with a love for a certain tonic that Severus always wondered what could possibly be in it. She had a bit of flair about herself, to the point where she always went the extra mile if it meant a grand entrance. She loved her girls but wasn't above punishment, especially from Lily. From what Lily later told him, Felicity was actually lived her entire life on a farm and had been raised as such until her father came along. Looking at all her fancy clothes and powder, he would never had guessed such a thing.

Next was Petunia Evans, a skinny eleven year old who had a more _masculine_ beauty so to say in the least. However to Severus's point of view she had the face of a very ungroomed horse and the attitude and manners of a feral dog. He never liked the older of the Evans' girls, and if he did it was to get a good kick out of her by making her angry. Lily tried at first to make them get along but finally gave up when he had managed to mix Petunia's shampoo with cow dung when they were thirteen. To this day he still smirks and wrings his long nose at the memory.

And then there was Lily Evans, a down-to-Earth girl who loved to laugh and practice magic on whatever she could find. She stood out from her muggle family with her fiery red hair, her clear sparkling green eyes, and her magical talents. She was beautiful in her own way, with her wit and outspoken personality, not to mention her stubborn edge. It was no wonder he had so hopelessly fallen in love with her. So in love with a girl he'd never win.

Maybe that's why he loved her so much...

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The day after they had met she had read him a story, a fairy tale she called it.

Cinderella, wasn't it? He couldn't remember.

It told the story of a beautiful girl named Cinderella who worked as a slave to her stepmother and ugly stepsisters...

He raised his hand as if he was in a classroom rather than her bedroom. "Why does she have the name Cinderella? It's so weird sounding."

"Yes, well, I'll keep that in mind next time, _SEVERUS!_" Lily gave him a dirty look and pushed her tangled hair out of her face.

Severus stiffened, recalling the last time he had managed to make her angry. His arm still felt sore from the arm twist charm she'd given him when he had called her "carrot top". "Er, yes well, you were saying about this Cinderella?"

Lily gave him a smile. "Ok, Cinderella lived with her step-sisters and step-mother, waiting for the day she would fall in love. Now at that moment, the King of the land announced a royal ball for his son, the prince, to find a wife to marry. So the invitations were sent and all the girls in the kingdom prepared themselves for the ball.

"At Cinderella's house, the step-sisters found their finest clothes and jewelry to woe the young prince and marry him. Cinderella wished to go as well, however her awful step-mother forbid it and left with her daughters, leaving poor Cinderella to cry in the garden-"

"Wow, they sound like a couple of-"

"SEVERUS!"

"... Sorry."

Lily cleared her throat and continued. "As I was saying, now Cinderella was crying in the garden when a woman appeared to her. She said that she was her fairy godmother and-"

"Ohhhh, now I get it," Severus grinned, understanding brightening in his onyx eyes. "She's a muggle princess! And that fairy god woman is actually a witch!"

She gaped at the boy sitting cross legged on her bedroom floor. With a calming breath she closed her book and threw at him dead on, his face crashing with the moving object.

She stomped off her bed and looked down at him, her arms crossed. "You're unbelievable Sev, I swear!" And then she smiled and helped him up. "But I guess that's why you are my best friend."

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It was the year they started Hogwarts that Severus Snape began to notice something change with how he felt for Lily Evans. The way his heart seemed to flutter like a bird about to take flight when she gave him her brightest smile, how her laugh seemed to always make him happy or even, for the first time in his 11 years of life, content. But the thing that made him truly feel special was when her small freckled hand intertwined with his pale one, almost feeling her bright radiance shoot up his arm like a firework.

Her father was the first one to notice and one day before they would leave by train he pulled the young boy over during an evening of catching fireflies. Lawrence sat him down in one of the creaky wicker chairs and sat stoically next to him watching his two daughters run around chasing the flickering bugs.

After what felt like an eternity to Severus he opened his mouth and spoke.

"I know how much you care for my Lily, I've been watching it grow for a couple of years now." He said between puffs of his strong smelling cigar. Severus opened his mouth to deny this but the red haired salesman waved him off. "Don't play stupid boy, just because I'm an old muggle man does not mean I'm blind.

"You seem like a strange kid and you've got the worst sense of style I've ever seen, but for some reason my daughter seems to have taken a liking to you." He pulled his cigar out of his mouth and breathed out the smoke, his green eyes never leaving the boy's face. "So you better treasure it while you can buddy boy, or you may regret doing so when you're an ole bag of bones like me.."

Severus shook his head quickly. "No sir, I promise to treat her with complete respect"

Mr. Evans grinned and for the first time Severus realized that he and Lily shared the same smile. "Good boy, now off you go!"

Severus Snape kept to his word for a long time, treating Lily like a princess and for a moment he could see her starting to look at him differently too. Even when at Hogwarts. He would go to his dorm, smiling like an idiot, thinking that he could live like this forever.

However, as he had learned when his father had left him and his mother one night and never returned, all things had to come to an end eventually. No matter how perfect he imagined they were together in his mind, Lily Evans' fate was not tied to his.

He had made sure of that when he called her a "Mudblood" accidentally that God awful day in the courtyard.

A day that soured even more so in his eyes the moment he watched the girl he had cared for run away from him, tears streaming down her beautiful face.

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Three years after that Snape noticed her hanging around the Potter boy and his friends, the same ones that had bullied him all those times before and on the day he had the biggest mistake of his life.

He would feel his stomach boil with rage like a kettle that had been left on the stove when he passed by their table and if he saw Lily laughing to one of Potter's jokes his face would turn red with rage.

He hated that boy more than anything else; more than the father that had left him and his mother, more than his mother who hated him and blamed him for his father's absence, and even more than himself. Deep down he swore he would never forgive James Potter.

Never.

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He had been in his home when he had gotten the invitation, it had been right after he had watched his mother be put to rest in her shabby coffin and lowered into the earth.

If he could remember anything that day it had been that feeling inside his chest, like a balloon had popped under the intense pressure of his heart. Rage, sadness, loneliness, all those feelings swirled around in his soul, threatening to swallow him whole in his despair. His thoughts turned to Lily and another emotion caught him in its grasp.

Betrayal.

That night he swore he would never care for another creature again and forget about her entirely as he slowly coated the wedding invitation in hungry flames.

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Snape gasped as the last few drops of his blood began gushing from his torn throat, his breathing rattled through his body. His fingers and chest had long since grown numb and his heart beat out pitifully in small pumps.

If he had been able to he would have laughed right there and then, humored by the fact that even in death Lily seemed to still cause him pain, physically and mentally, when he could barely handle it. After all, he_ was _dying here for her sake, wasn't he?

For her memory and for her son's life.

Oh what a terribly perfect way to die, a fitting end to his tragic life. A failure of a life, really. In a way it made him feel better, and if he was honest, a little smug, knowing that soon the great Harry Potter would realize that all this time he had been protected by a man whom he believed hated him. And that he had loved his mother of all people for all these years, longer than his own father had. How astonishing!

Pushing away the thought, Severus Snape set his grim determination on his death waiting for the moment when-

What!?

It couln't be-

It wasn't possible!

And yet, he felt it was.

As Harry felt his teacher and savior die in his hands, Severus Snape gathered his lost love into his arms and kissed her passionately as she placed a magnificent crown of daisies on to his black hair.

She laughed as they broke away, tears streaming from her green eyes.

"_I've missed you, Sev..."_


End file.
